Legal Status By Country
See also: Coca in BoliviaOutside of South America, most countries' laws make no distinction between the coca leaf and any other substance containing cocaine, so the possession of coca leaf is prohibited. In South America coca leaf is illegal in both Paraguay and Brazil.
In the Netherlands, coca leaf is legally in the same category as cocaine, both are List I drugs of the Opium Law. The Opium Law specifically mentions the leafs of the plants of the genus Erythroxylon. However, the possession of living plants of the genus Erythroxylon are not actively prosecuted, even though they are legally forbidden.
In the United States, a Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey has a license to legally import coca leaf. The company manufactures pure cocaine for medical use and also produces a cocaine-free extract of the coca leaf, which is used as a flavoring ingredient in Coca-Cola. Other companies have 2011 registrations with the DEA to legally import coca leaf according to 2011 Federal Register Notices for Importers, including Johnson Matthey, Inc, Pharmaceutical Materials; Mallinckrodt Inc; Penick Corporation; and the Research Triangle Institute. According to the Bolivian press, Coca-Cola legally imported 204 tons of coca leaf in 1996.
Read more about this topic: Coca
Famous quotes containing the words legal status, legal, status and/or country:
“In the course of the actual attainment of selfish ends—an attainment conditioned in this way by universality—there is formed a system of complete interdependence, wherein the livelihood, happiness, and legal status of one man is interwoven with the livelihood, happiness, and rights of all. On this system, individual happiness, etc. depend, and only in this connected system are they actualized and secured.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“If he who breaks the law is not punished, he who obeys it is cheated. This, and this alone, is why lawbreakers ought to be punished: to authenticate as good, and to encourage as useful, law-abiding behavior. The aim of criminal law cannot be correction or deterrence; it can only be the maintenance of the legal order.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“screenwriter
Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)
“It certainly must have been a relief for the women of the country to realize that one could be a woman and a lady and yet be thoroughly political.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)